Saturday brought the Xfinity Series back to the forefront for 250 miles of racing at Kansas Speedway.  This broadcast brought a new wrinkle into play

Before we get into that, back on Tuesday, NBC Sports announced the signing of Brad Daugherty to join their on-air team.  According to the press release, Daugherty's primary duties will involve the pre and post-race broadcasts under the umbrella of NASCAR America as the new fourth member of the team, joining Krista Voda, Dale Jarrett and Kyle Petty.

In addition, Daugherty will be on the call for what is described as selected Xfinity races.  He'll make his NBC Sports debut during the Michigan doubleheader weekend.

This will not be Daugherty's first go-around with NASCAR TV.  Previously, Daugherty worked on NASCAR broadcasts with ESPN, a job that he more or less transferred into from their college basketball coverage.  There, he held a somewhat similar position to what you'll see in the coming weeks.

Honestly, I remember him best for being somewhat ridiculous.  The only thing he did that really sticks out to me was when he had the giant fork on episodes of NASCAR Countdown during the then-Chase.  I stated at the time that I wouldn't have wanted to be sitting next to Daugherty

That said, how do I think Daugherty will work here?  I'm not sure at the moment, but he will be in a similar role to before.  He will be able to draw on his experiences from his time at ESPN.  He also has Jarrett, who he worked with at ESPN, by his side.

The booth work is a little more of a question mark because we don't have that much to go on from his time with NASCAR on ESPN.  I can only recall him in the broadcast booth on one or two occasions.  I will say this:  This will probably be interesting to watch.  We'll have to see what it looks like.

Back to Kansas, NBCSN had Jesse Iwuji on the broadcast as a pit reporter.  In practice, this actually looked like a mild version of the Drivers Only setup that FOX Sports has done for one Xfinity race a year for the past three years (the edition for 2020 got cancelled for obvious reasons).  Kelli Stavast was there more or less as his mentor (although she still worked on the broadcast as well).

Iwuji brings different life experiences to the broadcast than pretty much everyone else.  He's spent much of his adult life in the U.S. Navy.  That's a very different environment.  That said, he described being on a race team as being fairly similar to being on a warship prior to the race and gave equivalents to the various positions, which was interesting.

Iwuji did a fair amount of pit reporting Saturday, but it didn't seem like he was doing much of the live reporting.  That was left up to Stavast and Parker Kligerman.  Much of Iwuji's in-race input was based upon a number of conversations that he had prior to the race with drivers such as Harrison Burton and Alex Labbe.  These conversations did add some good information to the race.

I should note that due to a technical issue, I had to critique this race telecast off of NASCAR's upload of the race to their YouTube.  As compared to what would have aired on NBCSN, there are differences.  The most notable differences are that NASCAR doesn't use NBC Sports' graphics for the most part.  They have their own scroll that I would describe as being a modernized version of the one that FOX used from 2001-2003.  I like that.

There are exceptions to the rule, though.  One is when you have pit stops under caution.  They'll show NBC Sports' race off pit road graphic.  However, you also don't get get the additional shots of pit stops that would normally get during these sequences.

While yes, YouTube will load in ads every 15 minutes or so, there are no commercials on the broadcast.  When they cut to a commercial on NBCSN, they'll just show in-car cameras.  I'm not a fan of this because as we know, stuff happens during commercials.

The actual race was dominated by Austin Cindric, leading over 130 laps.  Watching this race, you probably wouldn't have realized that.  There was a good amount of racing for position Saturday, although what we saw was focused heavily towards the front of the field.

This was a very clean race.  There were no on-track incidents of note until the final couple of laps of regulation.  Then, Joe Graf Jr. hit the wall in Turn 3 to bring out the yellow and set up what ended up to be the first Green-White-Checker.

On the restart, Jesse Little crashed to bring out another yellow.  There was no replay of this incident.  Since then, we've discovered that Little spun after apparent contact from the aforementioned Graf and that this may have been payback for an incident in Texas.  Of course, I found this out after Graf and Little had a Twitter spat after the race.

That's not going to work.  You can't just act like something like that didn't happen.  At that point, NBCSN was too focused on the restart at the front of the field.  You have to explain what happened, especially if you didn't catch it.

Aside from the frustrations at the end of the race, this wasn't a terrible race broadcast.  There was good action to be had Saturday and NBCSN did a decent job covering that action.  The coverage did need to be more broad.

In regards to Iwuji, I thought he did a good job with the responsibilities that he was given.  In other words, it's a start.  Whether he chooses to do more in this line of work will ultimately be up to Iwuji and NBC Sports.

Phil Allaway is the Newsletter Manager for Frontstretch.  He can be reached via e-mail at phil.allaway@frontstretch.com.  The photo is courtesy of Nigel Kinrade Photography.